Prior to the advent and prolific use of distributed network environments such as the Internet, customer service sessions typically occurred over a teleconference between a customer service agent and a customer. These teleconferences, which incidentally are still very popular today, are initiated by a customer placing a phone call to a customer service agent. The customer service agent's phone receives the call through the Public-Switched Telephone Network (PTSN). Typically, such teleconference-based customer service sessions host a plethora of inefficiencies impacting both the customer service provider and the customer. For example, prior to speaking with a customer service agent, the customer is often subjected to a series of time-intensive steps in which the customer is required to select from a number of menu choices which may or may not be applicable to the customer's particular needs. Further, once the customer indicates that he/she would like to speak to a customer service agent, the customer may be placed on hold for a long period of time depending on the availability of agents and the demand of other customers.
In addition, such teleconferencing is inefficient from the customer service provider's standpoint due to the difficulty in predicting the number of customer service agents needed at any given time to respond to in-coming calls. As a result, more agents than are required may be employed at unnecessary cost. Further, both the agent and the customer are hamstrung by the lack of graphical illustrations inherent to the telephony world. Customers may experience difficulties both in orally communicating their questions or problems to the agent and in understanding the answers provided by the agent. Written explanations or illustrations may be abundantly useful to both parties. Illustrations may prove particularly helpful where a question or concern involves a particular product. However, such illustrations are generally not available with teleconferencing.
Because of these problems and inefficiencies, among others, customer service providers now provide for computer-based customer service interaction by way of the World Wide Web. Instead of initiating a customer service session by using the phone, customers may access a website and engage in a web-based customer service session to make inquiries (e.g., technical support) and/or perform tasks (e.g., paying bills). Web-based customer service sessions offer numerous advantages over teleconference-based sessions. For example, the graphical user interface of web-based customer service applications permit customers to view illustrations or written explanations and thus ameliorate the miscommunications which may arise with oral conversations between a customer service agent and a customer. Further, web-based customer service sessions enable a customer to directly target his/her needs on the website and thus reduce the time expended both in navigating through a series of vocal menu choices inapplicable to the consumer's particular needs and in waiting to speak to a service agent. Significantly, web-based customer service sessions are particularly cost-effective for the customer service provider given that fewer agents are required to communicate with customers. Indeed, customers are provided functionality for finding answers to their questions or performing tasks without any help from a live agent. These customer service sessions may be entirely computer-based or, alternatively, involve interaction with a customer service agent.
While there are advantages to performing customer service sessions over the web or other distributed network environments, such web-based systems are not entirely efficient. For example, websites typically do not support rich graphical experiences such as those which customers are accustomed to using in typical desktop environments. Web-based applications typically have primitive, or simplistic, user interfaces which are poorly designed and difficult to use because they are browser-based Internet applications, and browsers were generally never designed to support rich graphical user interface environments. Consequently, browser-based applications typically do not offer users the powerful and easy-to-use, rich interactive features of traditional desktop business applications, such as tab controls, slider panels, animation, toggle buttons, etc.
Current browser-applications typically display only a small set of native controls (e.g., text, radio buttons, check-boxes and drop-down lists) due to compatibility constraints with the various different types of web browsers available on the market. Limiting the native controls to those with common functionality compatibility reduces the need to design web applications to be specific to the particular browser used. However, the web-application interfaces suffer as a result. Additionally, there are difficulties in executing commands or changes on web-based applications due to slow response times and the need to refresh the display screen with any changes made to it. In addition, customer service providers typically incur significant operational costs in employing highly-trained, and thus high-salaried, software developers to create customer service website applications specific for a company's needs. For example, while a customer service inquiry may pertain generally to equipment malfunction concerns, such equipment is likely specific to a company's particular products and therefore must be particularly addressed in the customer service website application for that particular company; hence, compelling the need for experienced (and thus, expensive) software developers.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.